"A
leaked White House memo shows that if George Bush
is re-elected, he will make large cuts in many
government programs, including both homeland security
and veterans programs, while again cutting the
taxes of the wealthy."

"In
some parts of the northern hemisphere, April temperatures
in the fifties with rain wouldn't be considered
unusual. But here, Spring was at least three months
off, and summer a half hour after that. Then we
could expect to see fifties and rain. This weather
went against nature."

"History
has shown that human societies often misjudge
risk, and that is the case today. With world attention
focused almost exclusively on terrorism and Iraq,
another, even more serious security threat deepens
-- the global environmental/humanitarian crisis."

"This
fall, as many as 20 percent of American voters
will be able to cast their ballots on A.T.M.-style
electronic voting machines. But to put it mildly,
these machines -- where you simply touch a screen
and a computer registers your vote -- have not
inspired much confidence lately."

"President
Bush took his big chance in Iraq without buying
himself an insurance policy. He could have patiently
built a coalition of the many -- not only abroad,
but also at home -- rather than slapping together
a coalition of the few, including the not-entirely-willing.
He could have made clear, as his father did a
decade earlier, that a decision to go to war is
so momentous that Congress should consider the
matter under circumstances that would encourage
genuine deliberation."

"The
re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at
supersonic speed. Weapons of mass destruction?
Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qa'ida?
Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's
Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding
party slaughtered? Forget it."

"Americans
should realize that if they vote for President
Bush's re-election, they are really voting for
the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative
ideologues and their corporate backers."

"The
scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed
not by a digital photograph but by a letter. In
December 2003, a woman prisoner inside the jail
west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note.
Its contents were so shocking that, at first,
Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers
who had been trying to gain access to the US jail
found them hard to believe."

"In
other words, yes, while it might have been nice
to liberate Iraq from Saddam's clutches, it was
a lot more likely that under Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Co., we would end up arresting innocent people,
holding them without trial and systematically
torturing and sexually humiliating them; all the
while saying, as the Daily Show's Rob Corddry
so brilliantly put it, 'Remember, it's not important
that we did torture these people. What's important
is that we are not the kind of people who would
torture these people.'"

"The
Abu Ghraib prison scandal now implicates the highest
levels of the Bush Administration in violating
federal law and in war crimes. In barely two weeks,
the story has shifted from horrific photographs
of prisoners to intimations of homicide; from
prison mismanagement blamed on the fog of war
to the cool clarity of deliberate White House
designs to protect torturers from prosecution;
from 'the six morons who lost the war' to the
Defense Secretary, the White House Counsel and
the President himself."

"It's
time to stop beating around this Bush and start
beating up on him--but good. There is no set of
humanitarian or democratic principles by which
this administration would not have been removed
in any sane society."

"If
George Bush were to be judged by the standards
of the Nuremberg Tribunals, he'd be hanged. So
too, mind you, would every single American President
since the end of the second world war, including
Jimmy Carter."

"Brutal
interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel
are being investigated in connection with the
deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone
detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by
The Denver Post show."

"A
new investigation by Newsweek 'shows that President
Bush, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off
on a secret system of detention and interrogation
that opened the door to such methods' of abuse
and torture as documented at Abu Ghraib."

"The
White House's top lawyer warned more than two
years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted
for 'war crimes' as a result of new and unorthodox
measures used by the Bush administration in the
war on terrorism, according to an internal White
House memo and interviews with participants in
the debate over the issue."

"It
was strident, passionate, sometimes outrageously
manipulative and often bafflingly selective in
its material, but Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11
was a barnstorming anti-war/anti-Bush polemic
tossed like an incendiary device into the crowded
Cannes festival."

"If
you're black, voting in America is a game of chance.
First, there's the chance your registration card
will simply be thrown out. Millions of minority
citizens registered to vote using what are called
motor-voter forms. And Republicans know it. You
would not be surprised to learn that the Commission
on Civil Rights found widespread failures to add
these voters to the registers. My sources report
piles of dust-covered applications stacked up
in election offices."

"As
we watch the horror unfolding before our eyes
like a giant time-delayed broadcast, a deeper
horror should also be setting in. The entire discussion
surrounding the 'revelations' of mistreatment
of Iraqis by the US (does bombing water purification
plants count as mistreatment?) has taken on a
sickening, surreal turn."

"The
Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer
carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience
and transformed him forever. He was honorably
discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and
is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C."

"Now,
I guess I'm a little confused. I thought we, as
Americans, were proud to be do-gooders. I thought
we took pride in not sinking to the level of the
people who hate us. I thought we felt good about
offering an example to the world of how a civilized
country can and should look."

"The
problem opponents of the war have had in responding
to President Bush's claim of moral legitimacy,
as University of California linguistics professor
George Lakoff suggests, is that they have addressed
the moral issue in the terms the President has
framed it rather than reframing the issue in their
own moral terms. Talking about the world, or at
least Iraq, being 'better off' avoids confronting
the civilian carnage caused by the war."

"If
there is one thing about the horrific stories
coming out of Iraq that might possibly result
in benefit to America, it's the fact that the
American right -- sleazy, cold, amoral and vicious
-- have been exposed for what they are."

"First,
our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we
have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera.
Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie
England holds the leash of the naked, bearded
Iraqi. Take a close look at the leather strap,
the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie
could outdo the damage of this image."

"This
week the United States Army did the oddest thing
in this Age of Bush: It reprimanded six soldiers
in connection with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal
-- not for what they did but for not knowing what
others were doing. An Army spokesman put it this
way: 'They should have known. . . .' If that's
the standard, then half the Bush administration
will soon be gone."

"The
Sinclair Broadcast Group, a Maryland-based media
company whose holdings include sixty-two TV stations,
did the country a favor when it refused to air
the April 30 special edition of Nightline in which
Ted Koppel read the names and showed the faces
of the 721 US soldiers who had died in Iraq to
that point."

"The
Geneva conventions that have governed the treatment
of prisoners of war for decades were waved aside.
And the argument used to justify America's rejection
of the new International Criminal Court--that
its soldiers would be vulnerable to unreasonable
persecution, with necessary military actions defined
as crimes--looked ever more hollow. Thanks to
Guantanamo, critics could argue that America really
does need the check of the ICC, and that its claim
that abuses would readily be dealt with in domestic
courts was also hollow."

In
a transparent effort to mask the true costs of
war and reduce the size of the mounting budget
deficit the White House left funding for Iraq
and Afghanistan out of the 2005 budget it submitted
on February 2."

"Since
late February, the Pentagon has been in possession
of a report produced by Major General Antonio
M. Taguba that details the abuse of Iraqis incarcerated
in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Months later,
despite knowing of the 53-page report's existence,
top administration officials responsible for the
military still have not read the document."

"The
United States has finked out on its 30-year tradition
of support for the Global Health Council. The
Department of Health and Human Services has withdrawn
U.S. funding for the group's June conference."

"Specifically,
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
delivered a confidential report to the White House
earlier this year which 'concluded that abuse
of prisoners in Iraq in custody of U.S. military
intelligence was widespread and in some cases
'tantamount to torture'."

"But
a new study by the House Government Reform Committee
reveals that McClellan's claim is not true - in
fact, many seniors would pay more for drugs using
the 'discount' cards (which cost up to $30 a year)
than they would paying retail."

"I
am sick and tired of hearing Bush and Cheney criticize
Kerry's military record and the medals he earned
for bravery. Here is my description of the medals
earned by Bush and Cheney during the Vietnam war."

"Somewhere
at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, a public-affairs
officer is awaiting his fate. This still-unnamed
but totally clueless representative of the Air
Force Air Mobility Command apparently never got
the memo saying that the Pentagon and White House
wanted No Pictures (Got that? No Pictures!) of
flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover Air Force
Base from Iraq."

"Today,
for most of us, war is indeed, 'over there.' It
arrives only in green-screen TV reports and controlled
press briefings and presidential photo ops that
say 'Mission Accomplished.' Some of us would like
to keep it that way."

"Sir
Jonathan Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development
Commission, which advises Blair's government on
ecological issues, said the prospect of winning
access to Iraqi oil was 'a very large factor'
in the allies' decision to attack Iraq in March."